Complaints over Serbian City's 2021 Culture

ANALYSIS

  Complaints over Serbian City’s 2021 Culture
             Capital Preparations
                  Matthew Griffin | Novi Sad | BIRN | August 5, 2019

 Feeling left out, independent artists and cultural groups are unhappy with how
         Novi Sad is preparing for its moment in the spotlight in 2021.

Serbia’s second city, Novi Sad, is gearing up to be one of three European Capitals
of Culture in 2021, but some members of the independent cultural scene in the
city on the Danube complain they have been largely excluded from planning for
the project.
Seat of the country’s northern Vojvodina province, Novi Sad was picked for the
honour in 2016 alongside Timisoara in Romania and Elefsina in Greece.
In 2017, a European Union-appointed monitoring panel released a report
expressing concern about the artistic direction of the Novi Sad project and a lack
of participation from the independent cultural scene in the city, famous since
2000 as host of the popular Exit music festival.
A subsequent report, released in June, said the city had made “promising”
progress, noted the strong political support for the project and commended the
“capacity building activities for the local public cultural institutions and NGOs”.
It also, however, acknowledged the concerns of the independent cultural scene.

It described the involvement of artists as “not yet fully visible” and said
procedures to involve local stakeholders “may be too strict to attract individual
artists.”

“The role of the independent sector for the European Capital of Culture is not yet
fully reflected in the current outline of the programme,” it said.

The report cited those in charge of the project as saying all groups had an equal
opportunity to participate in the project and that “potential partners are treated
equally”.

It said that the Novi Sad 2021 Foundation had dedicated 2019 to “involving the
independent sector in the Novi Sad 2021 project.”

Halfway through the year, however, some independent artists and cultural
activists remain unhappy.

Zoran Pantelic in the office of kuda.org

Consultation after the fact

“The doors are closed to us,” said Branka Curcic, co-founder of the Group for
Conceptual Politics, a local advocacy group for housing and local community
issues. “It’s a big problem and it’s a public problem.”

Curcic’s organisation sent two open letters to the monitoring panel last year
describing what it said was the “collapse of the institutions of cooperation
between government and civil society”.

“I don’t think that the encouragement and support to [the] independent cultural
scene is visible,” Curcic said.

The Foundation and the city authorities did not respond on record to requests
for comment for this story. The European Commission, the executive arm of the

EU, and the monitoring panel referred this reporter to the latest monitoring
report.

In a statement on the Foundation’s website, Vuk Radulovic, head of the
Programme Development Sector for Novi Sad 2021, said the latest monitoring
report had “very positively assessed the involvement of various stakeholders of
the cultural scene”.

Radivoj Novakov, a local tour guide, told BIRN by email that the initiative had
created a “new positive image for the city”, lured more tourists, improved the
economy and cultural offering and encouraged the “feeling that we are… part of
European civilisation.”

But Zoran Pantelic, co-founder of a local art and advocacy group called kuda.org,
said the Foundation had only consulted the independent scene after already
deciding on a set of projects.

Independent artists and activists had the chance to comment on some of the
specifics, but not the overall strategy, he said.

“They come to us much later,” Pantelic said in English, “after all business [is]
done.”

The old Chinese neighborhood in Novi Sad

‘Private project’

In an email to BIRN, Tadija Janicic, a local artist whose work has been displayed
around the world, complained that the Foundation had yet to launch a “serious”
exhibition of local artists and described its impact on Novi Sad as “purely
cosmetic”.

“The local art scene is almost non existent and the impact of the Novi Sad 2021
Foundation is purely cosmetic. I personally find the most of their cultural
programs and projects being very low quality. As a painter, I do not remember a
serious exhibition was organized. Still, I hope the projects will become more
advanced as the year 2021 is approaching,” he said.

Janicic’s fellow artist, Petar Mirkovic, told BIRN: “They are very hermetic, very
non-transparent. They always said, ‘Okay, let’s work together, we are open’, but
they are not. They are just pretending that they are.”

“Nobody is invited to participate in 2021,” he said. “It’s [a] private project.”

Janicic concurred, writing that “the Foundation has barely spoken to [him] in
planning the projects.”

Janicic and Mirkovic work in the city’s Chinese quarter, an area of the city that
has been a point of contention between officials and the independent scene.

The Foundation has taken on the task of restoring the former factory district, and
as part of that project the city evicted the artists and artisans who lived there.
Mirkovic said that he and Janicic had refused to leave and were still working in
the neighborhood.

Petar Mirkovic in his atelier, showing a book that documents the history of the Chinese quarter.

‘Fight for our own’
Nevertheless, Slobodan Jovic, head of the Foundation of Novi Sad Architects,
which collaborates with the Novi Sad 2021 Foundation, said that progress had
been made over recent years.

Communication, he said, is now “possible and it’s there. Before, it wasn’t there.”

Jovic, who said he was also involved in the local cultural scene, said that those in
charge of the project had recognised “that they need the capacity of the people
from [the] independent scene to finish this job.”

Pantelic, too, conceded there had been some movement; kuda.org, he said, had
worked with the city in developing six production lines focusing on different
aspects of culture and that the local government planned to hold open calls for
funding for each of these categories where previously there had been only one
annual open call for culture funds.

Still, it was not enough, he told BIRN.

Novi Sad 2021 was shaping up to be a missed opportunity, Pantelic warned,
citing what he called the Foundation’s “bad methodology” and failure to
understand the local cultural scene.

“We have to fight for our own,” he said. “And unfortunately all these
opportunities, which [come] from this agenda of European Culture Capital, will
totally miss us.”